GeniAus

Friday, December 8, 2023

Accentuate the Positive Geneameme 2023

Back in 2012 when geneablogging was more popular than it appears to be today I threw out a challenge to fellow genies. I have continued this tradition each year.

I wrote "I feel that a lot of my geneablogging friends are too hard on themselves; several have reported on their successes this year but quite a number have lamented that they haven't achieved as much as they set out to do or that they haven't blogged with the frequency they envisaged.".

In the meme I ask respondents to Accentuate the Positives of the current geneayear by responding to some prompts. Over the years a generous group of genies has responded to these geneamemes with entertaining and enlightening posts.

Two regulars have already asked if there will be a 2023 edition. How could I not go ahead after that interest? Here goes:

A Snow White Dome

When fiddling on my blog today I noticed that, in my header image, I had brown or pepper and salt coloured hair. Nowadays my dome is snow white. My branding should reflect the person that I am.

I liked my old image that showed me waving while frolicking in the ocean. I liken my genealogy environment to a body of water where I can swim - a place where I can relax and have fun, play in the shallows or dive deep, it's somewhere that can throw up challenges and surprises.

When holidaying in Vanuatu earlier this year I was enjoying a swim in a glorious lagoon when Mr Geniaus snapped a photo of me enthusiastically waving and showing my white hair plastered to my head. The image shows me in a happy place as I am when playing in my genealogy world.

Over I went to Canva where I created a new header using their Blogger Header template. I've uploaded the completed image to the blog. While I may tweak it over the coming days it will remain basically the same until I next fiddle with my branding. Next task is creating a new header for the Geniaus Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/geniauspage

The new header - created with Canva

Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Almost a Year

I had committed to updating my online tree regularly from my main database in Family Historian,

Over the past year I have made my tree a priority. I have been beavering away adding new cousins and finding BDM and Burial references for those already in my tree. FindaGrave has provided many clues that have assisted in finding these references. Each time I play around I promise that I will upload to my website - but that boring task isn't as much fun as the thrill of the hunt.

Today's discovery that the last upload was in December 2022 made me move. I bit the bullet and can report that my website is up to date! It was so long since I had had carried out this task that I had forgotten the process and had to find my notes. It is a simple exercise that only took me 15 mins (including the finding instructions).

If I want to connect with cousins I need to do this on a more regular basis.

Latest Statistics - www.geniaus.net

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Aunty Kath's Slides

Dad's younger sister, Kathleen Curry, was the first person in my immediate family who travelled from Australia to work in another country.

Kathleen Curry 1927-2013

During the 1960's Aunty Kath and her friend Pat Jones travelled to Wellington, New Zealand where they lived, worked and explored. A second adventure in that decade took them to Port Moresby in Papua, New Guinea where they also worked. I remember devouring Kath's letters recounting her adventures that she religiously sent home to Nanna each week. Perhaps I was inspired to travel by her letters.

Aunty Kath was also one of the first people in our family who had a 35mm camera. Our family only had a Brownie Box camera that took tiny black and white images so I was most impressed with the brilliant colour slides Aunt Kath's camera produced.

As Kath had no descendants of her own her husband's family passed Kath's collection of colour slides on to me after she passed away.

I have been busy scanning and sharing the family photos in the collection with my cousins and they have brought great joy. I didn't know what to do with her travel snaps that included several holidays in Australia. I was surprised that there was only a small collection of images from PNG. What to do with those I found?

For want of somewhere else to share them I am pasting them to this post. Perhaps they will help someone in the future who is searching for a particular image.

Thankfully these images were labelled so I am adding Kaths's descriptions from 60 years ago to each image below.